Humiliating Career Moment #1,492,353: A few wheels were greased and the mayors of two Tampa-area cities — St. Petersburg and Treasure Island — agreed to attend our press conference for celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse, where they’d declare it “Emeril Lagasse Day” and give him the official keys to their cities.
Which meant, someone had to write the mayoral proclamations. (Cough.)
So I Googled the format (a bunch of “Whereas…” followed by a “Therefore, be it resolved…”) and wrote it up. A day or two before the event, the mayors signed ‘em and we had ‘em framed. And it was pretty good copy, if I say so myself: “Whereas, the City of St. Petersburg, home of the friendliest people, the freshest seafood, and the most gorgeous sunsets… blah, blah, blah.”
But to save time, I used the same copy for both cities, only swapping the names.
I figured, why not? It’s just a photo-op anyway — and to be perfectly honest, the two cities aren’t really that different. (We’re not talking about, say, Miami and Moscow.) They’re two Tampa towns by the bay. Who cares?
And besides, it’s not like anyone’s gonna read these proclamations out loud. Right?
WRONG.
And the mayor who went second wasn’t pleased about looking like a hack.
I learned an important lesson that day: Don’t be lazy — and don’t assume you know more than you do.
Being smart enough to know what you’re dumb at is an underrated life skill. Just ask Clint Eastwood:
Politics is a balancing act. If you underreach, you get nothing done (and you demotivate your supporters); if you overreach, the blowback will knock you backwards and cost you everything.You need to settle into a sweet spot of continual improvements, where you constantly gain new ground without overextending your army. Because, if you gain too much ground too quickly, you probably won’t hold onto it very long.
You’ve gotta solidify your gains.
It’s something politicians have in common with big businesses: Managing your growth is harder than you think.
You’d be surprised how many companies go bankrupt not because they couldn’t make a profit, but because they mismanaged their growth. It happens a lot.
Scalability is tricky.
Emotionally, we’re attracted to absolutists: the passionate, unbendable zealots who draw a line in the sand and refuse to compromise. We romanticize absolutism.
Trouble is, they don’t produce much: An absolutist who lacks absolute power is absolutely useless.
It’d be an uphill PR sell, but imagine if a politician campaigned not on absolutism, but on incremental gains. Instead of promising you the moon and stars, he picked a few problems — like crime, jobs, or immigration — and pledged to improve the situation by 10%.
Like abortion: Roe v. Wade wasn’t overturned ‘til 2022. By then, 63 million babies had already been aborted on U.S. soil.
Waiting for the Supreme Court worked… eventually. (Only took 50 years.) So maybe, it would’ve been smarter to focus on reducing the number of abortions by 10% each year.
Had we done this for enough decades, tens of millions of babies would’ve survived.
It’s not nearly as emotionally satisfying as absolutism, but there’s something to be said for incremental gains. Ex-Fox News Channel personality Bob Massi (RIP) used to tell me, “Scott, you don’t go broke by making a small profit each day.”
Perhaps it’s worth considering.
PRediction: Get ready, ‘cause 2026 will be the Year of Affordability. So, if you love talking about affordability:
- You’re very weird.
- 2026 will be the best year yet.
For everyone else — especially if you work in professional politics — you better develop an affordability narrative ASAP.
Even if the economy takes off like a SpaceX rocket, affordability will continue to be the talk of the town. It’ll be on the tip of the media’s tongue; it’ll be the lead story of thousands of newscasts.
That’s because the Democrats can’t afford to let affordability go.
You’ve gotta see it from their point of view: The Democrats were wandering in the desert, losing to MAGA at every turn. And this time around, they couldn’t blame those dastardly, meddlesome Russians. Trump’s 2024 victory was too lopsided to spin away.
For almost an entire year, they were terrified they had lost the country.
So, imagine their relief when affordability became the buzzword du jour, propelling the Dems to victory in New York City, Virginia, and New Jersey. For liberals, it was the greatest miracle since the sainted Obama descended from the heavens. Salvation had arrived!
Finally, they knew how to beat Trump.
They quickly shifted from calling him Hitler and attacked Trump on affordability at every turn, pretending the word was a magical incantation — the key to slaying the Evil Orange Beast.
Maybe, if they say it enough, they’ll be unstoppable!
Like wannabe Merlins, they’ll keep on chanting “affordability” throughout 2026, hoping it’ll make MAGA disappear. It took ‘em this long to find a winning issue; you’re crazy if you think they’ll let it go without a fight.
You’ll have to pry affordability from their cold, dead fingers.
The mainstream media will do all it can to amplify the affordability issue. They’ll pepper every Republican with condemnation, blaming every price increase on MAGA, Trump, and the GOP.
The Republican Party is committing political malpractice if they’re not investing in fighting this. They need a new narrative ASAP. They need new talking points. And they need to figure out how to counterprogram the mainstream media, because the Affordability Army has amassed on our border.
From a PR/crisis communications perspective, it’s priority #1. The midterms depend on it.
PRojection: So, how do we bypass the mainstream media and win on affordability? I’ve got a few ideas:
- Create an irrefutable “dashboard” of five ordinary household expenditures (think: cost of milk, gallon of gas, price of eggs, etc.) and track them. Could be anything, as long as it makes sense to the average American family. (And if you’re thinking the Trump administration could cherry-pick items that exploded under Biden and have fared far better under him, you’re thinking strategically.)
- Give these five items a catchy name. For example, if our five items are bread, ice cream, detergent, eggs, nursery (diapers, etc.)… well, what do you know: we have the acronym B.I.D.E.N. Which means, we’ve now got ourselves the B.I.D.E.N. Index for measuring painful, record-setting inflation.
- Publish the B.I.D.E.N. Index on every federal communications outlet. Push it hard on conservative media. Make it famous on social media. And brand Donald Trump as the man who fixed B.I.D.E.N.’s mess.
PRaise: To the popcorn-worthy catfight between two aspiring 2028 presidential candidates, ex-Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Penn.). This is a story conservative media should elevate, because it’s the sort of dirty laundry that the Dems try to keep behind closed doors.
The backdrop is simple: When Harris interviewed Shapiro for a potential role as her running mate, she wrote in her book that Shapiro was a power-hungry, elbow-throwing narcissist. Therefore, she had no choice but to go with Captain Charisma, Tim Walz. (Who is very smart and has all the right chromosomes, too.)
The original article is from The Atlantic.
Here’s a recap from The Hill:
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) accused former Vice President Kamala Harris of telling “blatant lies” to write her postcampaign memoir “107 Days” and “cover her a–,” according to a profile about the governor published in The Atlantic on Wednesday.
Reporter Tim Alberta described Shapiro as “between outrage and exasperation as I relayed the excerpts” about him from Harris’s book. She accused Shapiro of taking over the conversation when he was interviewed to be her running mate, allegedly insisting on being “in the room for every decision,” Alberta wrote.
“She wrote that in her book?” Shapiro asked. “That’s complete bulls—. I can tell you that her accounts are just blatant lies.”
Oh, it gets even juicier:
Alberta also told Shapiro about some of the questions Harris recounted him asking her during the interview, including about the size of the vice president’s Naval Observatory home and if the governor could loan Pennsylvania art for the residence.
Shapiro defended himself and said that anyone would ask questions “if someone was talking to you about forming a partnership and working together.” When asked if he felt betrayed by Harris, Shapiro “snapped,” Alberta wrote.
“I mean, she’s trying to sell books and cover her a–,” Shapiro responded before he backtracked and told Alberta, “I shouldn’t say ‘cover her a–.’ I think that’s not appropriate. She’s trying to sell books. Period.”
Of course, it’s very possible Harris was right. Perhaps Shapiro is a squirrely, pushy, untrustworthy backstabber. (If so, he’s in the right line of work.) But methinks the real reason why he was snubbed was less because of his ambition — and more because he’s a Jew who once wore the IDF uniform.
Given the extent of liberals’ hate for Israel, Shapiro risked fracturing the base. Can’t risk triggering the r-word: rebellion.
(Meanwhile, Gov. Walz is focused on the other r-word.)
PRedators: Candace Owens climbed atop Charlie Kirk’s corpse and monetized his murder better than any other influencer. She’s insinuated that Charlie’s closest friends, staff, and Turning Point USA employees participated in his assassination.
Erika Kirk was suspect, too.
Only Candace was smart enough to see through the conspiracy. (Fortunately, she was willing to share her wisdom with the rest of us unwashed masses.)
She even told Turning Point USA, “You could pick the place, you could pick the time,” and she’d be there to reveal the TRUTH about Charlie’s assassination like only she could!
So, they took her up on it:
Not all that’s done in name of “truth” and “justice,” promotes truth and accomplishes justice.
— Mikey McCoy (@Michael_McCoyy) December 3, 2025
Thankful for the incredible @BlakeSNeff @DrFrankTurek on the show today!
I’ll be happy to address all of this on the livestream with you guys.
Sincerely,
Mikey McCoy? pic.twitter.com/lNqqCqM8Jb
Next came the invite:
The livestream we announced on the show Wednesday has been set.
— Blake Neff (@BlakeSNeff) December 4, 2025
At 4 pm Eastern, 2 pm local time on Monday, December 15, a collection of Charlie's friends will respond to statements made by @RealCandaceO, to set the record straight once and for all prior to the opening of…
And… what do you know, Candace can’t make it: That doesn’t work for her.
Her hypocrisy was duly noted:
🚨Candace Owens BACKS OUT of TPUSA's invitation to debate...
— Nathan Livingstone (MilkBarTV) (@TheMilkBarTV) December 5, 2025
HOW CANDACE STARTED: I fully accept. You can pick the place you can pick the time.
TPUSA: Dec 15. Phoenix, Arizona.
HOW CANDACE IS GOING: That's a pretty busy week.
😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/8ItDQu9NT8
Turning Point USA called her bluff — and Candace went running:
Yesterday, we made it clear that we would be scheduling a formal response to the allegations and accusations you have made. We've decided that response will be delivered during a livestream on December 15th.
— Blake Neff (@BlakeSNeff) December 4, 2025
Thank you for your response letting us know you will not be joining the… https://t.co/mnhvqcqRFH
Bonchie, my RedState colleague (who has a helluva X game), couldn’t resist:
This is exactly what she did when Ben Shapiro challenged her to sit down and have a discussion with him some years back.
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) December 4, 2025
At first, she rattled her sabre, but then flipped and started quibbling about the time and place.
She's a coward. Always has been. https://t.co/QqtC1LY5wq
Well done, boys: You’ve exposed the troll.
